Metro finally getting its TAP act together

Sometime this summer, the turnstile gates will close at Metro's train stations and riders really will be forced to pay the fare. But before that can happen, the agency is remaking the TAP card system that discouraged honest riders from paying up. According to ZevWeb, Metro is redesigning the confusing screen instructions for buying and loading TAP cards, and basically making over what the public sees. The "validators" that riders are supposed to tap with the TAP cards are also being relocated to where they are actually useful.

[Metro] is relocating “stand-alone validators”—which customers must touch with their TAP cards to legally board the train—at 24 stations. Those include the Wilshire/Vermont station, where passengers transferring between the Red and Purple lines must hop on an escalator or hike up and down 200-plus steps if they want to play by the rules and tap their cards before boarding.

“That was ridiculous. That was just not acceptable,” said David Sutton, Metro’s director of TAP operations. He said the sheriff’s department isn’t citing people in problematic areas—places where a customer has to “leave a rail platform, go upstairs, tap, come back down” in order to fulfill the law.

Sheriff's deputies wrote more than 69,000 violations last year, the vast majority for fare evasion.

Photo: ZevWeb